


Black Geraniums for Gerry

by fantasticcole



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Gerard Keay Lives, M/M, Mary Keay's A+ Parenting, Nonbinary Gerard Keay, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:08:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantasticcole/pseuds/fantasticcole
Summary: Gerard Keay always remembered the darkness of the forest. But Mary, born citydweller and bastard mother, would have never allowed happy childhood memories... Had Gerry ever been at a forest cottage as a kid? What do those dreams of caves and strange yellow doors mean?Gerard Keay lived his usual book hunting routine until Mary decided to skin herself alive and Gerard was arrested. Yet, a certain Distortion by the name of "Puzzles" interfered in Gerry's solitary confinement. Fast forward some years, there's his work with Getrude, some brain surgery, a failed escape, and suddenly Gerry finds himself right back at the Magnus Institute, staring at a yellow door.What if Gerard had always somehow known the Distortion, but his memories are too dangerous for him -- and everyone around him? Is the Beholding really the Fear that claimed Gerry -- or could the Dark be hunting him? Or even the Spiral?
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Black Geraniums for Gerry

**Author's Note:**

> This is a project for fun, so might not get updated as often. Need to get back into the writing habit, plus, developed an unhealthy attachment to the dead goth child. Another fic about Gerry (and eventually Fuckhands McMike)? You betcha.
> 
> No beta, we die like overworked warehouse staff.

Believe it or not, he truly wanted to save the world. Ever since he was a little kid, scratched knees from running around the forest paths behind their secluded domicile and falling over deeply-rooted tree branched and treacherous twigs, he remembered the darkness and the fog. Mary Keay, the fury burning in her eyes at any given moment, fingers busy twiddling around sharp knives and even sharper book pages, did not approve of Gerard's excursions into the forest - for his education of magical artifacts and words of incomplete nightmares had a starker appeal to her than her own husband and hostage. Gerard knew that he was also a hostage, but as much as the darkness of the forest called to him, leaves folding into strange shapes and even stranger colours, the darkness inside Mary was louder. 

As much as Gerard might have struggled against those indescribable terrors of the blinding pain of fire burning most of his innocence, and of putrid crawling under his skin, and of choking on damp soil after he had closed his eyes, and of the uncanny quiet in his grave, and of the wet sounds of blistering skin peeling off of flesh, and of running from someone further into the welcoming branches, and of his father's eyes unfocusing after a knife had found its way into his rips, and of laughing at the grinning pantomine behind their cottage, and of standing on a field and knowing there was no return, and of following the spiders into a dripping cave, and of seeing cave paintings as vast as giants that were leaning towards a yellow door, and of forgetting who he was, and of knowing it had not been a dream.

Gerard had recollections of his time at the forest cottage, but then again, why would have Mary, a born city-dweller and bastard mother, ever allow him to have anything good in life, ever? It had always sounded like a strange dream of cut up memories, like a puzzle with too many corner pieces and not enough visual markers to lessen his headache. His father had been murdered, so much was certain, yet, he could never truly connect his mother to the crime. It was almost hysterical that he had been connected to the murder and mutilations of Mary Keay. He would have laughed into the officers' faces, but he had been a suspect as soon as the word "goth" had been dropped by their noisy neighbours. Surely, they had never bothered to engage any police forces whenever strange sounds or strange people had entered the bookstore-slash-black magic pit of despair, but when the owner and proprietor of his nightmares had been killed, all eyes, including the ones on his knuckles, were looking at him.

After a respectble tally of eleven Leitner books eliminated from their rotations around the normal folk, Gerard Keay, also known as Gerry Keay, or Gerry Delano, stemming from some Baroque German lineage of the Von Closen, had been arrested and held in custody. They had dragged him out of the warm coffee shop in the middle of winter, drying blood caked to his ripped jeans and heavy combat boots, numb fingers wrapped around the indistinct mug long cold. Strange hands had suddenly grabbed at him and he had not been able to stop himself from instinctively twisting out of them, leading to his face smashing into the cold table surface, grunting as they fixated his wrists with handcuffs. Could he unlock them with the bobby pin always stashed away in his long sleeve, somewhere between his wristwatch with the broken face and the commemorative leather band from his one and only vacation in Italy? Surely. Yet, he was too shaken to resist arrest. Something in his head was screeching like a siren. He heard his name, somewhere, far off, fading away like the echo of a broken record player.

The cell was dark and cold. Gerry had not realised what they had been talking about or asking him, the only object on the metal table had been the book within the evidence bag, still oozing with blood like an open stomach wound. As much as the need to destroy this Leitner was taking a hold of Gerry, knowing that it was his mother's blood and dying breath within those pages made him sickeningly upset. He had thrown up, directly on his own boots. When he couldn't produce any other words or sounds, the policemen brought him to an isolated room, probably thinking he was drunk out of his skull or on some murderous drug high. It was always the same with them, the "normal" people. The cold metal cod was blank, not even a little blanket had been provided. He was cold without his leather jacket and felt naked without dark colours on him. He had been thouroughly documented, in photography, DNA and fingerprint samples, and had been tasked to wash himself with a wet cloth and a cracked bathroom door for sanitary purposes. Finally, he had received a standard forest green shirt with a dark blue hooded sweater, a pair of unshapely jeans, and slippers one size too small. Long hair still dripping onto the rough concrete floor, Gerry tugged his knees to his chest and covered his face with his shaking hands. His mother's laboured breaths, bloodied hands reaching for him -- he ran when she needed him the most and he hated himself for it. But after all those years of coldness, Gerry felt this heavy feeling of relief burning inside of him.

Tears faded into sobs, until his throat was rough and his head was empty. He blinked against the dim light and stared directly before him. The room had two doors: the main door he had been pushed through to receive his mandated night of sobering up, and the yellow door of unknown destination. Maybe a bathroom? No, they would not have provided a suspected psycho murderer with an en-suite. The longer he stared at the door with the round metal doorknob, the more conflicted and intrigued he became staring at the wood with the most curious wood grain, like vines or flowers endlessly folding and unfolding into themselves. Fractals. When his foggy brain came to this short conclusion, the doorknob started to turn. 

Gerry's body enlightened with all irrational energy still inside, and he jumped up while wiping away his drying tears and mascara stains. Dark strands of tosseled and fading dye fell into his face. His hand grabbed his wrist for a hairband, but there were none. Yet, he was entranced by the door and the moving doorknob that kept turning, slowly and deliberately, for what seemed like endless minutes. The wood screeched open for just one slim gap into a bright unknowable room. When fingers slid out of the gapuntil they were of inhuman length, knuckled digits white and dry as bone scraping along the cement wall, Gerry's trance was broken and the panic toppled over itself, washing over his adrenaline-soaked brain like storming waves. 

"Gerard Keay is in a bloody pickle.", said the Distortion from behind the door, fingers clacking along the wood as if playing some strange tune. "I heard Mary found a very evil book, nothing to meddle with for small ants like her."

"Don't worry, she's dead now.", answered Gerry matter-of-factly, gulping at his own words. 

The tapping continued, forming a rhythm that Gerry knew but could not place. Whenever the thought came close to making sense, the sight of those boney hands made it impossible. 

"Why does the lamb love Mary so, Mary so, Mary so?", hummed the Distortion behind its door, hinges squeaking dangerously as if breaking off the walls at any given moment while its fingers were tapping along the words and the Distortion's brain static. 

A nursery rhyme. Amidst all his panic and fear and grief and guilt, Gerry huffed, which turned into an uncontrollable laugh. "Think that shit's funny? My mom's fucking dead and shredded to pieces, let's all fucking laugh about it, shall we?"

The tapping stopped abruptly. A short silence reigned upon the door, but Gerry had enough of monsters and enough of menacing creatures showing up and threatening his life ominously when he was having a fucking bitch of a day. "What, cat got your tongue? Come out already, shred me to pieces, too!"

The more he screamed and invited death into his very closed quarters, the more his usual rage drowned out all his other emotions. He focused on one thing and one thing alone: his imminent death at the Distortion McFuckhands and how he was actually looking forward to it. At least it would really freak out the policemen when they found him in pieces sticking on all the walls and the ceiling. 

"Your fleece is not white as snow.", answered the Distortion, and if it was possible for a primordial force to sound insecure, it might have in that moment.

"Carpet's not matching the drapes, but that's not your fucking concern.", muttered Gerry between grinding his teeth and placing his feet in a fighter's stance, the only thing he had remember in his one single lesson of Kung Fu. "What are you waiting for?" The door opened wider, but the monster did not move out of its doorway. It was just a jumble of migraine-inducing shapes and clashing colours, nothing even connecting to the floating knife hands. "What have you always been waiting for?

Why did Gerry say that? He looked into the jumble of shapes, seeing one sharp puzzle piece floating around the torso area of the thing. Puzzles. His nightmares. And that fucking nursery rhyme!

"I've seen you before! Why can't I remember it?" There was a deep shaking within him, together with a deep knowledge of recognising something within that jumble of fading shapes widely resembling some kind of moving mass.

"I do not want you to remember it, Gerry.", answered the confusing blob with familiarity on its nonexistent tongue. Gerry's head was throbbing with a stabbing migraine.

"Only my friends can call me that."

"I know, Gerry.", said the Distortion, chewing his name like bubblegum. 

"What is your name?", came from Gerry's lips and some ancient memory of cave walls pushed itself into his eyes. The eyes on his knuckles gleaned over the evermoving shapes, pulling at his burn scars like sore wounds. 

"I do not have one, but you tried to give me one once.", answered the humanoid shape, slowly moving backwards into the shining light behind it. Gerry knew - although he did not know how or why - that the Distortion was tilting its head to the side and welcomed him into its doorway. "You called me 'Puzzles'."

"I don't understand...", said Gerry, eyes shifting from the humanoid nightmare to the hallway realm pulling him into its irritating, inescapable embrace. He could not control his feet, nor hear anything other than static drowning out everything, including his own racing heartbeat. Gerry, book hunter and marked one by the Beholding, stepped into the hallway and felt the door close behind him. 

The Distortion laughed, echoes dancing along the walls in yellow and purple. A hand with monstrous digits placed itself on Gerry's cheek, and he felt blood and sweat run down his jawline and trickle along his exposed collarbone. He could not move, could not see, could not think.

"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb.", said the cranky voice over the screeching and buzzing within the walls, singing like a horror movie child right behind him. "They wouldn't have let you go."

Delayed in his mental processing ability, Gerry brought a hand to his cheek and marvelled at the blood on his fingertips. The stinging of a fresh wound was a common sensation in Gerry's life, yet, his own blood did not have the correct colour. Something in the texture and consistency was wrong, but the realisation that his blood was sparkling with scattered rhinestones and sequins drowning in multicoloured glitter sent him over any and all acceptable thresholds of mental health.

"What the fuck is this?", asked Gerry's voice, somewhere around them, and broke in his throat like a glass bottle. Fear spread through his fingertips. This would be it. He had heard of the Distortion's games of stalking and hunting until its victim was ripping their own eyes out, finally succumbing to the sharp puncture of fingers drawing fractals into their innards. Shivers crawled through Gerry's frozen body. 

The Distortion was right behind him, coldness emitting from monster still sing-songing the nursery rhyme like a broken record. With the landscape of inconsequential and illogical corridors taunting Gerry to try his luck, he did not know if running would improve his chances, but the need to move forward and escape the monster's reach was overwhelming. 

When the Distortion started giggling once again, Gerry's feets simply decided for him; Gerry ran like his life depended on it, blinded by nauseating patterns and rippling hallways. Every turn he made only brought him back to the Distortion, so that he crashed into sharp objects and corners of the obstacles and walls to sharply turn the other way. The laughter followed him wherever he went. 

His body was filled with panicked screams. Aching and tiredness soon began to take over. He had never been much of a runner. Sharp pains in his sides slowed him down, until Gerry finally toppled over something and plummeted downhill for what felt like several floors. The walls were brighter than before, yellowing wallpaper clinging against crumbling plaster, and the searing pain of the impact shot through him. One of his ankles had been twisted by the cubed rubble, while his palms were scraped open to reveal more glitter bleeding out of him. 

"It's all in my head, yes, just my head.", he told himself, trying to explain to himself why sparkly blood was freaking him out as much as it did. 

"I decide what is in your head.", said a voice, much closer than before and several octaves higher than the disembodied and genderless singing of the Distortion. 

The walls had stopped spinning and morphing into impossibilities and aneurysms, and Gerry finally saw the wallpaper behind all the distractions: the yellowing white walls were filled over and over with handwritten symbols and citations within pentagrams, amidst of book piles and yellow ribbons. But the yellowing wallpaper was splattered with drying blood and the ribbons were torn police tape. 

When he turned to face the familiar voice, he saw skinned hands reaching for him. His mother's face was tainted with smeared ink and a scornful grimace of pain. "You ruined my ritual, Gerard.", she said, cloudy eyes staring into his. "Your work is not over."

Gerry's throat tightened involuntarily, choked up by the deep panic running through him. His hair was sticking to his sweaty forehead and neck, while the blood on his hands and his scraped knees turned a darker color than the bubblegum pink from moments before. The darkness of the forbidden bookstore returned slowly, and Gerry saw the Distortion stand in a bright yellow doorway, arms folded and legs tightly pressed into the ground. The Distortion's eyes lit up for one short moment, betraying its unhappiness and concern over the situation, righr before the door slammed shut and out of existence. 

"It cannot get to you while I am here.", said Mary, cupping Gerry's wounded cheek with her bloodied hand. It was ice-cold and hard. "I let the police file disappear. I'm afraid you will need to buy a new jacket and a new phone." Her fingers were so coarse that he grimaced against the inspection of his face, feeling new blood dripping from the scratches. "I cannot act as freely anymore, so you will have to act for the both of us, Gerard."

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if there's anything salvageable in there! My writing is rusty af, ma dudes.


End file.
